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Jan 14, 2011

Binder Cover

I was grabbing a plain, red binder from the hall closet the other day, and I almost felt bad for the poor thing. It was so boring...so bland...so dull. So, I figured I could fix that without spending one penny! I took a little walk down to my fabric closet and found a scrap of some great striped canvas that had been waiting for a project just like this!

To start you'll need a piece of fabric that's 41" long, and 13" wide.

The striped fabric that I really liked wasn't long enough, so I added a piece of brown broadcloth on either end to make it the full 41". I think this project would work best using a fabric that doesn't have a ton of stretch to it.

If you're planning on covering a binder that is wider than 1", you may need to adjust the fabric length. Just wrap the fabric around your binder and see if it will fit, add an extra inch on either side for seam allowance and you should be good to go.

Hem the edge on the ends of your long stretch of fabric.

I wanted to have a little spot inside my binder to keep a pen and highlighter handy, so I sewed a little pen holder on the inside flap of my binder cover.To do this, gap a leftover strip of fabric, about 4" wide and 6" long.Fold it in half, right sides together, and sew along the long edge.

Then turn this little tube of fabric right side out and iron it flat. Fold over one of the open edges and sew it wherever you want your pen holder to sit on your binder cover. Once secured, grab a pen and measure how much space you need to leave for it to easily slide in and out.

Pin and sew the section in place, repeat for however many pen holders you'd like for your binder cover. Trim your tube of fabric if necessary, and turn the unfinished edge under before you sew the last section down.

Lay out your fabric, right side up, and center your opened binder on top of the fabric. Wrap the ends of your fabric around the open cover of the binder and pin the folded fabric in place. I needed to slide my binder out to get my pins in properly, just make sure your fabric doesn't slip if you need to do this too.

Using a simple, straight stitch, go ahead and sew it in place. Trim the corners, and turn your binder cover right side out.

When you turn your cover right side out a little fold will be created at the top and bottom edge, between the flaps for your binder to slip in. I did a quick seam along both of those folds to keep them nice and flat and to prevent fraying.

Give the whole thing a run over with the iron and slip it on your binder!

A major improvement over the original bland red binder...but still a little blah for me.

So...

I whipped up a few quick fabric flowers, adorned them with some fun buttons and attached them to the front of my binder cover. Ahhhhh...much better!

And one more pic of the inside of my completed project:

And that's that!I know it seems like a lot of steps,but it really is a simple project that you can tackle in under an hour.